


for the first time, there was something in me

by raewastaken (IWriteLove)



Series: second guessing games [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Coming Out, Depression, Found Family, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Underage Relationship(s), M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Trans Bitty, Trans Male Character, Trans Nursey, Transphobia, Underage Drinking, nonbinary lardo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 15:51:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7690525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IWriteLove/pseuds/raewastaken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a good reason why Derek Nurse is so "chill". Several, in fact. And all it takes is a group of hockey playing weirdos to break him out of the shell he had put himself into.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for the first time, there was something in me

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: the feelings nursey has about being trans are not a blanket for all trans people. they're very heavily based on my own feelings and my own experiences, and im no way intended to make it sound like this how all trans people feel.

Nursey’s twelve when he realizes some things about himself. 

First off is that he doesn’t feel like all other girls in school; the girls who primp themselves in the bathroom mirrors with their compacts and lipglosses and talk boys and compliment each others hair and clothes. Nursey usually stood back, kind of awkward, casting uncomfortable glances to himself in the mirror, but refusing eye contact with his reflection. The revelation, if he could even call it that, barely comes as a surprise because he knew there was something almost  _ off _ about him growing up, with the way he felt in his body and the way he didn’t want to play dress up in dresses and skirts. Friends when he was younger labeled him a “tomboy”, and there was a pull his heart to accept only half that label, but he didn’t really have a label for  _ that _ yet. He ignored it, like he did most things in his life up until that point. It usually worked better for him when he did that.

Second thing is his love for literature and writing started to blossom. He somehow got put in the middle of a creative writing class in seventh grade, and it wasn’t his first choice. Creative Writing was the backup class to Home Economics, which was the back up to Woodshop, which was the backup for Spanish V (to this day he still doesn’t know why they offered so many levels of Spanish). Creative writing was, really, plan C, and he would have grumbled about it the first day of class, if he hadn’t totally fallen in love with his teacher - Mrs. Alaina. She was sweet and kind, and when Nursey turned in a half baked poem on the way the leaves change color in the fall with shaking hands, only to get a bright smile in return, he knew he was going to love her class. She called him a natural with words, and helped pushed him toward better sentence structure, how to make things flow together. He didn’t realize he fell so in love with poetry until his nanny made a remark about all the scratched words in black sharpie up and down his right arm two weeks after school started. And Mrs. Alaina, when he turned in a short story that read more like some freeform poem about the weird things going on his brain, didn’t comment on it. Didn’t chide him for feeling that way. She just smiled gently at him and patted his arm. He likes to think she was the first to know.

The third thing Nursey finds out at twelve is that he’s depressed. At first, it doesn’t make sense, because he’s got a screwed up view on mental illness because nothing around him was too great about giving him information, and doesn’t consider himself sad, because that’s all he thinks it is. He likes to believe he was happy a lot when he wasn’t giving himself uncomfortable glances in the mirror or having a silent panic about being into both boys  _ and _ girls. Sure, sometimes he woke up with his face barely poking out from under his blankets and just stared at his bedroom wall, wishing the day would just go away, and sometimes he found it hard to bring himself to do much of anything. He figured he was just lazy, until his nanny comes to check on him on a Saturday morning, and instead of him croaking out that he’d be down in a few minutes, his brain to mouth filter breaks and he makes some passive, sarcastic comment about how he’d rather die than get out of bed. He wasn’t suicidal, he still doesn’t know why he had said that. His brain to mouth filter never really repairs itself after that, and his nanny ushers him to a psychiatrist two weeks later and the diagnosis comes with little shock to him. He gets put into therapy, they tentatively put him on medications, and somehow his parents never hear a word about it.

That’s something about Nursey he guesses is important, in a backhanded, sort of fucked up way; his parents are never around. Were never around. As far back as he could remember, it’s been nannies and babysitters taking him to school and watching over him at home, and he doesn’t need to write a novel about the cold, empty feeling he gets at how quiet and uninhabited the house is to make himself realize how fucked up it is. Because he knows. He  _ has _ known. Maybe he realized just how messed up it was at twelve when he was staring at a little green and white pill in his hand without his mother or father there to hold him and tell him it was okay. Maybe he always knew. He doesn’t really know.

Twelve ends up being an eventful age for him. At the end of the year when he spends another Christmas in bed with his nanny cooking something for them downstairs in the kitchen, he starts filing away all the things he found out about himself, and feels tack in his throat when he tries to swallow down one thing he never addressed much.

He still doesn’t feel like a girl.

 

* * *

At fourteen, Nursey finds a term that settles on his chest like a comforting weight, and one that he holds onto dear life for.

His nanny comes around less after his fourteenth birthday, more to his request because he can, mostly, take care of himself. And because she’s getting old, she looks tired, and he knows keeping up with a fourteen year old is tough work. He doesn’t exactly make it easy between the anti-depressants and the hormones from going through puberty, he thinks, but doesn’t say. But he doesn’t really mind when he’s left home alone more often than not with his thoughts and the silence of the house, and just his laptop and music to keep him grounded. He knows the house is too big, too quiet and too empty for a fourteen year old, but doesn’t let it bother him, because, really, this has been a reality of his since he was old enough to walk and old enough to be pushed off onto other people. 

What isn’t a reality for him is the day he stumbles across the term “transgender”.

He wasn’t actively seeking it. Figuring himself out when it came to gender got stuffed away in the back of his mind after he started taking medication and started finishing up junior high, and he’s just fucking around on the internet when he finds it. It’s mentioned in an article about gender presentation and expression, and if Google required running, he’d probably be stumbling to google it. He pulls up the Wikipedia page, because it’s the first thing on the list, and it feels like a punch in the gut at first when his eyes scan the lines and take in the words and  _ really _ think about them.

_ “Transgender people are people who have a gender identity, or gender expression, that differs from their assigned sex.” _

It’s like he’s been flipped upside down. At first, he doesn’t get it, then it settles, then it sparks like matches on a matchbook. All those years spent staring at skirts and dresses and wrinkling his nose, all those years watching classmates talk makeup and hair and feeling disconnected. All those times he stared at himself a little too long in the mirror after puberty started rearing its ugly head and ran his eyes over the curves that were starting to mold into his body and the chest that was no longer flat and everything else he could pick out that just felt  _ wrong wrong wrong _ . There wasn’t something wrong with him. There was a word for it and other people like him, and-

He doesn’t do anything about it, really. He reads a bit more into it, but feels like he’s buzzing just finding out there was a  _ word _ for how he was feeling for a good chunk of his conscious life, and he can’t focus on the words. He briefly finds out sexuality terms, pushes around the terms  _ pansexual _ around for a bit, before he finds out there’s things called binders that help compress chests and buys one without thinking, to solidify that, yeah, this is something he wants to do. He eyeballs his size, considers it to be the same as his shirt size, because it just looks like a tank top, and lays in bed for hours after that, music still playing from his laptop and his mind buzzing and a smile on his face.

Trans. Nursey was trans.

Nursery is still fourteen when he starts school at Andover, though. It wasn’t something he was surprised to find he was going to do. He knew the boarding high school hell was coming up quick, he only wishes he had time to come out before then. His parents are barely around and rarely care, so he doesn’t bother telling them anything, and thinks himself  _ too _ chill when he walks into his first class and hears his birth name be spoken aloud. He lets it roll off his back, even if it feels weird on his tongue and foreign in his ears. The only thing he really looks forward to in Andover anyway, is hockey.

They have a hockey team at the school he’s attending. He saw it listed in the pages upon pages of information about starting the new school year, and doesn’t hesitate to sign up for it. He thinks sports would be good for him, and if he could have one part of his school day that doesn’t revolve around being called by his birthname, that would be great. It’s also a co-ed hockey team, but he’s not surprised to find there’s only about four girls on the team. To everyone else, there’s five, but he doesn’t linger on that. The coaches call everyone by their last names, he knows this. He’d rarely hear his birth name being spoken around here. 

He gets pseudo cornered in the locker room by a guy that’s a few inches shorter than him with a moustache that seems against school policy and has fire in his eyes. They just had their first skate, just to get a feel for the ice, and Nursey got the hang of it real quick, despite the fact he was clumsy and never skated in his life. Nursey’s grateful, for a moment, that he somehow got his father’s crazy tall genes because the way this dude is looking at him makes him feel a creeping of fight or flight, before it fades when he opens his mouth. “What’s your last name brah?”

Nursey blinks, once, twice, before clearing his throat. “Nurse.”

The dude smiles like Nursey just told him he won the lottery, and throws his arm around his shoulders. “Nursey,” is what he says. “Your name is gonna be fucking Nursey.”

“Uh…”

“Hockey nicknames. They’re goddamn important,” he says, then pulls back, offering his hand. “Name’s Shitty.”

“Okay,” Nursey says, and take his hand to shake. “I’m-”

“Hey, first names aren’t required. You’re Nursey as far as I’m concerned. Welcome to the hockey team,” Shitty tells him, patting his arm and walking off to introduce himself to more of the new players, and Nursey stands there for a moment, before he turns away and puts his stuff up. He later learns Shitty is a senior, has been on the hockey team all four years, and is going to Samwell University when he graduates. Nursey stays on his toes around the hockey team, even if it's co-ed, and only let’s his guard down a notch when Shitty starts getting onto one of their forwards about using gendered slurs, and how he needs to be less of “a sexist piece of shit”. Nursey decides Shitty is pretty alright then.

When he gets home, he looks up Samwell, and decides Shitty is definitely alright.

 

* * *

Nursey is fifteen when he meets his short lived best friend.

Shitty isn't at Andover the start of Nursey’s sophomore year, and he tries to let it not get to him. He's taken a real liking to hockey in the short time he's been playing, and minus the couple of seniors that have moved on and a few new kids that have found their way into the team, Nursey still knows everyone. He tries out his binder here and there, gets his haircut at his shoulders when he realizes it starts to bother, and keeps his mouth shut about everything else. The hockey team melts into conservative hard asses that spew venom that Nursey knew Shitty would have never let fly, but he lets it roll off his back; they don't  _ know _ . When they meet back up, pre season for first skate, Nursery gets stuck on one new player in particular. To this day, he wishes he hadn't.

Tate - whose nickname is Tot, from one of the d-men who thought they were funny - transfers to Andover and immediately jumps into the hockey team. He carries himself well on the ice, and Nursey would be lying if he said he didn't cast long, almost flustered, glances over at Tate the entire time. He was handsome, Nursey wouldn't beat around the bush about it, a couple of years older but still a junior, and on a good handful of occasions, he had caught him staring back and it had set Nursey on fire. Nursey’s bumped up to defense his sophomore year and Tate, inevitably, becomes his d-man partner and it feels  _ right _ . Once the gear is shed and they're back in their school clothes, a conversation is struck up (Nursey still doesn't remember from who), and it was like tumbling down from there.

Nursey would rarely compare anything he's done in life to an avalanche; a small snowball rolling down a blinding white mountain side that keeps going and going and going until it's not so small anymore, and it's rumbling and destroying all in its wake before it inevitably crashes. He considers himself rational, not too impulsive, but from the moment he and Tate became fast friends, it's all he felt. He felt the energy and the buzz under his fingers, the way he was pulled so easily into Tate’s gravity, how he felt like he belonged laughing at him across from textbooks and unfinished homework in the library, how their chirps on ice were light and poking, how Tate’s eyes sometimes lingered just a bit longer on him when they were saying goodbyes after practice. Nursey didn't have a lot of real friends growing up, considered himself a bit starved when it came to companionship, and Tate filled that void in his chest perfectly. The void that's stuffed with flushed cheeks and a rapidly beating heart and a smile he can't get rid of no matter what he does.

Nursey might have been fifteen when he first fell in love, but he was also fifteen when he made three terrible decisions in one night.

He didn't hold a lot back from Tate, when he thought about it; he told him about the poetry (which Tate had just laughed and motioned to his right arm for, and Nursey had been bright red for hours after), about the depression and the pills, about how he had only been in hockey for a year. He mentioned the money his family had, the nanny who checked on him occasionally, then he mentioned his parents - or lack thereof. About them never being around, missing important dates for school, holidays, birthdays, everything in between. He talks about how empty his house is and how it echoes when he's alone. He was the first person he told about his absent parents outside of his nanny, and he was so young and too stupid to realize the trap he baited himself into when Tate asked if he could hang out sometime with him. Nursey was so wrapped around his finger, he didn't think of a single risk he could run by saying yes. 

Current Nursey wishes he could go back and protect past Nursey from everything that night; rationally, he knows it shaped a good chunk of his personality, for better and worse, and he knows without it, he would have never pushed himself to do all the things he did do later. He would have never gotten where he was if that night never happened. But had that night happened differently, he would have never had a chance to stand here in the first place. 

Tate’s over for not even ten minutes before he asks if Nursery’s parents have an alcohol stash. Nursey wasn't stupid, he knew they did. He wasn't playing the game to be a perfect child, either, and wouldn't hesitate to admit he had cracked open a few bottles of alcohol that were worth enough to pay parts of his tuition, but he never made a habit of it. He was a lightweight, and he was always aware of what it would do with him on his meds, and, really, getting drunk while you’re fifteen in a house so massive it feels like you’re drowning isn’t the best idea of a Friday night to Nursey. But he caves under Tate’s questioning, finds the key his father hides away, opens the liquor cabinet, and they go to town on it. Nursey doesn’t like the taste of half the things Tate makes him try; whiskey burns like fire in his throat, rum leaves his head blurry and vodka feels less like sandpaper, but it makes his tongue tingle for hours. They don’t have the mind to mix their drinks with anything, with the stuff Nursey knows they have in the kitchen, so they drink straight from bottles, passing them back and forth, and Nursey will admit (he’d be the first, the very first, to admit) that he let Tate talk him into one too many bottle passes by the way the room spins. He could feel that tickle in the back of his mind that suddenly made him feel so bad about everything, but he pushes it back, like he normally does, because he was having fun. This was fun. Being with Tate was fun.

They finish off two bottles of whiskey between them, and Nursey’s too far gone and too giggly and too cuddly to care about the ratio of him to Tate on who drank the most. Tate’s faring infinitely better than him, although Nursey can see the way his cheeks are red, and he knows he’d get an immediate answer if Tate stands. But Tate doesn’t stand. At first, it feels like a slow motion shot in a movie, all syrupy around the edges, running so slow it feels like molasses; Tate turns toward him, a bottle of straight tequila still in his hands, before he sets it on the coffee table alongside every other half empty bottle of liquor they had cracked open. He spoke to him, but Nursey was so busy staring at the way his muscles moved under his black shirt to actually hear. “S-Sorry, wha’?” Nursey slurs, looking back up at him, and his face feels on fire.

Tate is so  _ close _ , they’re almost sharing space. He sways a bit on his hands on the couch, where he’s planted them on either side of Nursey’s legs, and there’s a look in his eyes Nursey has  _ never _ seen. It makes Nursey’s heart pick up in his chest. “I said, let’s fool around,” he murmured, low, and Nursey feels a pool of heat at the bottom of his gut, hears one half of his brain that isn’t so clouded over with alcohol go  _ no, this is a bad decision, you’re only fifteen, you’re drunk, this is everything and more that Shitty warned you about _ , but the other half of him, the half that’s been so attracted to Tate since the moment he saw him on ice, screams nothing but  _ yes, yes, yes, yes _ . Nursey conflicted, and doesn’t get to answer before Tate’s pressing his lips against his, and it’s not soft or gentle, or romantic, any of the things Nursey ever thought his first kiss would be. Tate tastes like whiskey and tequila and vodka and bourbon all mixed together, and the kiss is rough, and awkward, it almost hurts because Nursey can feel Tate’s teeth on the other side of their lips. But Nursey, whose so starved for love and for attention and for touch, whose brain is doing backflips between overjoyed and a feeling that everything is wrong and that he  _ shouldn’t have mixed alcohol with his antidepressants _ , pushes it all to the side, rolls to fit on his back, and tangles his hands into Tate’s hair.

It’s nothing but the awkward drunken slide of lips for so long Nursey thinks they fell off the plane of existence all together. Nursey holds Tate’s hair and Tate doesn’t touch him but bites his lips in the middle of the one long kiss they’re locked into, and Nursey can’t hold back a moan in his throat at the feeling, doesn’t ignore the way his lower gut feels like fire and he presses his thighs together and squirms. That’s when Tate puts a hand on his waist, just at the top of his jeans, and slides his hand up, up, up his side, pushing his shirt up as he goes, and Nursey  _ wants _ so much in that moment, that he lets Tate pull back from the kiss, let’s him sit him up, unsteady, and pull his shirt off. He shivers at how cold the air is around him before Tate’s pressing him back down and kissing him again, and Nursey forgets about it, forgets about it all. Forgets that he’s drunk, that his body doesn’t feel right for this moment, that he’s only fifteen and Tate’s turning eighteen soon, tries so hard to forget the way Shitty told him drunk people can’t consent, because he wants this, and that’s enough, and he doesn’t know any better.

Tate’s hands go the one place Nursey doesn’t want them, until they’re there, though. He slides a hand down his side, to the waistband of his jeans again, then moves them to the front, where he unbuttons the button and unzips the zipper. He starts to slip his hand down, between the fabric of his designer denim and the cotton of his panties, before a  _ swoop _ of nausea hits his stomach, and he pulls his hands from Tate’s hair and pushes against his shoulders, breaking the kiss in the process. “N-No, I-I-” he stutters out an exclamation, and he feels himself sober up in a split second, but everything still feels so blurry and hazy. “D-Don’t, I-”

“What’s the prob, Nurse?” Tate teases,  _ chirps _ , but it doesn’t make Nursey feel any less sick, doesn’t calm the way his brain is screaming panic, screaming  _ wrong this is wrong this is so fucking wrong _ . He doesn’t pull his hand from where it is, though. “I thought you wanted this?”

Nursey considers everything he could say, how he could word for word recite Shitty’s lecture on consent, how he could tell Tate he was on his period, how he felt sick at the idea of Tate’s hands on him like they were. But, Nursey doesn’t; he cuts immediately to the chase and he tells him the truth, because he’s drunk and his brain to mouth filter still hadn’t repaired itself from when he was twelve. “I’m a guy,” he says, quickly, amazed when his voice doesn’t slur. His heart lodges in his throat.

He expects a lot of things to happen in those few moments, but his heart holds onto Tate accepting it because Tate is his  _ best friend _ , and he was so in love with Tate, and he just wants  _ something _ good in his life, for once. But Tate laughs, his hand doesn’t move from inside his pants, and he smirks. It’s not a nice smirk. “Yeah, if you’re a guy, then I’m the president. Nice try.” And he starts to slide his hand further into his jeans, and Nursey feels like he’s really going to vomit. “Doesn’t feel like a guy to me.”

“Stop!” Nursey says, panicked, and he pushes him, again, just hard enough to knock him back to the other side of the couch. He scrambles up, away, grab his shirt where it was on the coffee table and holds it over his chest, over his bra, covering himself and suddenly feeling so so self conscious. He was a guy, he was a guy, he was a guy. “I’m trans, Tate.”

“Oh,” Tate says, and it’s not a relieved, understanding  _ oh _ , like the kind Nursey gives when his creative writing teacher tells him why a sentence is so messed up. It’s venom, it feels like a slap. Nursey goes cold inside. “You’re one of  _ those _ people.” Nursey feels his eyes burn, but the tears won’t come. He doesn’t know what to say, but Tate drops the silence before it settles to long. “Whatever, I can still get laid.” Then he’s being shoved back down on the couch, and Nursey feels a scream on the tip of his tongue that maybe escapes, he doesn’t know. Tate tries to pin him, but Nursery is in  _ hockey _ , he’s not weak. He moves a hand to Tate’s face, to push him away, and digs his nails into his cheek and scratches from the corner of his eye to the corner of his lip, and Tate pulls back, cursing and holding his cheek. Nursey, this time, pulls back so far he acts stands from the couch and backs away, panic making his chest heave, heavily and painfully, adrenaline making his hands shake.

“Y-You fucking bitch,” Tate spits at him, and he flinches like he’s been hit. Nursey sees blood smeared on his cheek. “Fine, whatever, have fun being an unfuckable freak.” Then he’s gone, slamming the front door behind him. The entire house feels so cold, so empty, so suffocating the instant Tate is gone, and Nursey feels so overwhelmingly alone.

He doesn’t remember a lot after that, doesn’t know if he repressed it, or if the alcohol made him forget, but he remembers collapsing onto the tile in the bathroom, sobbing so hard it made his lungs and stomach hurt, how he gripped his arms so hard it left little crescent shaped marks in his skin. He remembers seeing blood from that, how clouded his judgment had been, how fucking stupid and impulsive he was, remembers alcohol and antidepressants don’t play nice together. 

The next solid thing Nursey remembers is waking up in a hospital room with every part of him aching. There was a steady beep somewhere, and he shifts, just enough, before realizing his entire left arm feels like fire, and looks down just enough to see the bandage that goes from his wrist halfway up his forearm. He remembers his nanny coming in and holding him for so long while he cried that he knew he should cry, but he couldn’t bring the tears to his eyes, couldn’t find words in his throat. He has stitches in his skin when they remove the bandages. He has scars there for the rest of his life.

Nursey doesn’t talk about that night for a really long time.

 

* * *

Nursey is seventeen when he enrolls in Samwell.

The name never shakes after he meets Shitty. He looks into the school and the campus and finds out they’ve been ranked as number one most LGBTQ friendly in the country, and feels his heart tug toward it. He had brief, passing conversations about sexuality with Shitty back when he was still a freshman, and he’s the one who helped him figure out that, yeah, pansexual was a term that fit him; attraction to every gender. He knows it’d be better if Shitty knew he wasn’t cisgendered (another word he learns, thanks to the senior), but he figures Shitty was a better help than his half assed Google searching. He thinks he trusts Shitty more, too, and he doesn’t trust many people after… well.

He knows that’s what changes about himself after that night of mistakes; Nursey had been outside of people’s orbits before, but after Tate, he cuts himself from them entirely. He gets back to school after a few days in the hospital, and two weeks recovering at home, where his nanny watches after him more closely and doesn’t get onto him about the alcohol, and about Tate. When he’s back around peers, he closes himself off, sticks to his journals of poetry and writing, and hockey. He can’t escape what happened in hockey, and it takes a few practices before he can look at Tate without feeling a surge grab his heart so hard he feels like he might pass out, but it’s never the same. Nursey, ultimately gets taken of the defensive line and someone else takes his position with Tate, but he doesn’t complain. He approaches as cooly as he can; it’s the first time Nursey starts considering himself “chill”, but it’s not a conscious decision. It’s a coping mechanism. He retreats further into his shell, his dark corner of his mind where everyone is out to get him his junior year, when Tate’s given the title of captain. He doesn’t remember much about that year.

When it comes to colleges his senior year, after Tate’s out the door and out of his life, he doesn’t know how to go about enrolling at Samwell. He’s fallen in love with hockey since he joined the team in Andover, even with Tate and the fallout from that, and it’s definitely something he wants to keep working toward. But Samwell doesn’t have a co-ed team like Andover, he realizes quickly, with a pit of dread, which means Nursey has a decision to make; either he finds another school, or he enrolls in Samwell and finally, properly, comes out. 

He put it off in Andover after what happened when Tate and the rest of the hockey team showed their true colors. Tate never outed him, technically, but he definitely never keep quiet about his opinions on the matter when Nursey was around. Part of him is worried about being at Samwell, coming  _ out _ at Samwell, but remembers that Shitty will be there, remembers how Shitty almost started a fight during a game because someone had thrown the six letter f-word out, remembers that Tate  _ won’t  _ be around. He thinks he’d be okay. He knows he’d be okay. He has to, because he doesn’t want to dead end in his life because of this.

So he gains more confidence than he had had in two years, writes emails and letters to admissions about applying with a different name, ever so nervously (with a spark under his fingertips) uses the term “trans” about himself for the first time since Tate, tries to shake the feeling he gets after he does. He gets confirmation back that it wouldn’t be a problem; he can enroll with his preferred name listed in the school, his mail can be sent under his birth name in case his parents don’t know, and they’ll make sure everything can be accommodating. He lets out the biggest sigh of relief when he gets the email back, finds hope in doing this, then tries to steel his nerves for rejection as he sends emails to the hockey coaches, Hall and Murray, about being on the men’s hockey team.

The next day he’s sitting in the library scratching poems into the same journal he’s had since he was twelve when his phone vibrates on the desk. He pulls it up and looks at the email he has sitting in his inbox, and isn’t able to contain the very unchill shout he does.

That night he enrolls as a freshman for Samwell University as Derek Malik Nurse. Two weeks later he gets his acceptance letter and gets a haircut - finally - and a tattoo he has to flash his fake ID to get to celebrate.

 

* * *

Nursey’s eighteen when he takes the freshman tour of Samwell. 

He puts on his worn out binder under clothes that are a big baggier, and a hat over his still short hair, and when he introduces himself as Derek to everyone, with a nervous lump in his throat and dread in his heart, no one questions him. He takes it as a good sign that no one’s going to call him out around here, but he doesn’t relax anymore than he has to. He more or less hangs around a black haired kid that introduces himself as Chris and sounds like the human version of an exclamation point and a red headed kid that stiffly says “Dex” as a name and looks uncomfortable. Nursey feels for him, but let’s himself get drug around by Chris and Dex for the afternoon while the hockey team’s manager - a short girl by the name of Larissa who looks like she could kill them in their sleep - tells them about the rink. They get promptly passed off by Larrisa to a short blonde kid that honestly looks fresh out of middle school who shoves baked goods in their faces and rambles on about places they’re going to go see. His name is Eric Bittle, from what Nursey can gather out of his thick Southern accent, and Nursey idly snacks on a cookie from his gift basket when he sees Shitty walk in. He’s carrying a box for Bittle, it looks like, and he sets it down before giving a fist bump to Larissa. It’s when Eric’s walking off talking animatedly to Chris about his pie recipes that another frog pipes up and asks a question. “So you have two managers?” he asked, and Nursey saw the way Shitty’s face crinkled like he was trying not to laugh. He remembers that look.

“Nah. Bitty’s not a manager. He’s on the team.”

Nursey gives one last glance at Eric - Bitty - as he walks out of the rink with a few other frogs in tow, and hears Dex hum quietly from next to him.

He thinks he might like it here.

 

* * *

When Nursey starts school - officially - at Samwell, he finds a few things out.

Easiest is that the hockey team has a house on frat row ceremoniously called The Haus. As far as Nursey can tell, the upperclassmen are the only people who actually live there, but Bitty makes the chipper comment about everyone is allowed to come over to the Haus whenever, which Shitty takes over to quickly throw in “but not the fucking lax bros!”, and Nursey realizes some things really never change. He doesn’t know if Shitty recognizes him or not. He figures if he does, he’s not saying anything, not going to out him to the team because Shitty isn’t like that. But Nursey figures he’d get around to it eventually, even if the idea of coming out to an entire hockey team makes him want to throw up. He also meets his other teammates, and figure out names for the main group that’s always at the Haus, even if they don’t officially live there. There’s Holster and Ransom, defensemen, juniors. They were together when Nursey was introduced, and if he’s honest, he still doesn’t know who’s who. There’s Jack, who’s the captain, a senior, and he recognizes him from all that drama from a few years back, but Nursey doesn’t bring it up, and notes how happy he looks compared to how he did on the ESPN talks about his college career. Larissa goes by Lardo, and she turns out to be the manager everyone deserves, and usually shows up with some kind of paint under her nails. There’s Bitty, a sophomore forward who’s always baking anytime he’s in the Haus and whose speedy on ice, and acts almost like a sort of team mom. Chris, from the tour, gets the name Chowder and the position of goalie, and he finds out he’s  _ really _ into the Sharks and actually is a human exclamation point (but it’s endearing and cute). Then there’s Dex, whose name turns out to actually be William, and they’re placed together as defensemen, and… Nursey doesn’t want to think about him. They fight a lot. It’s all he has to say.

But as the weeks go by, Nursey finds himself getting pretty comfortable with them. It’s weird, because it’s a comfort he never felt at Andover, a comfort he never felt around Tate, but he embraces it because it’s about time he surround himself in people that don’t make him feel like he’s walking on eggshells after so long. Because of his comfort, he doesn’t find a reason why he should need to come out now. No one questions him when he tells them his name; he’s Nursey on and off the ice, or he’s Nurse to the coaches, or if someone’s particularly pissed, he’s Derek. They don’t know his birth name, they don’t know what’s under his clothes or in his pants, and he knows they wouldn’t care. But he doesn’t want to; he still sees Tate’s face everytime he thinks about it.

It’s the comfort that turns around and bites him in the ass one day after practice. Normally he strips his hockey gear then grabs his bag and disappears somewhere secluded and private to change so no one can see his binder. No one comments, and he really thinks he likes these people if they keep their noses in their own business. But he had been feeling particularly good that day, like the sky opened up and the stars aligned so his medication wasn’t making him feel drowsy, and he didn’t have that overwhelming feeling of dysphoria in his head, and practice went well that Coach Hall only yelled at them all a handful of times. Everyone’s talking cheerily as they pull off gear and jerseys and grab towels to disappear to shower. Bitty walks by him with a happy little hum and pats his shoulder, before he hooks his phone up to the speakers to play some music while they get ready to go their separate ways. Jack and Shitty are chatting about classes and Chowder chimes in about a class he and Dex wanted to share with Nursey, and Nursey’s on autopilot as he laughs and starts pulling off his jersey while he talks. “Yeah, but I’m more of a poetry gu-” 

It’s only when he has his jersey balled up ready to be thrown into his bag that he realizes what he’s done. A cold, creeping fear moves up his body and it almost hurts how hard he freezes in place. The music keeps playing, and he can’t even argue that no one noticed because Jack, Shitty, Dex and Chowder all had their eyes on him for sure, and he knows the rest of the team loves eavesdropping. He doesn’t know what he expects in the next few moments; a comment about his weird looking ratty tank top, a question about it in case they do know what it is. And even though he knows better, he almost expects getting shoved into a wall and have slurs thrown at him, to have a repeat of Tate and all the abuse he had to lowkey take during hockey. But that never happens. Whoever was paying attention to the conversation turns away from him, and he’s still clutching his jersey like it’s a lifeline with his heart pounding loudly in his ears when Bitty walks back by. He pauses in front of him, picking absently at a stray string at the bottom of his binder, before smiling up at him and patting his arm. He doesn’t realize how tense he is until he melts under the touch. “You should look into getting a new one,” he says, before he walks off, and the conversation is dropped. 

 

* * *

It’s a few weeks after the locker room incident that Nursey’s cornered by Shitty in the Haus kitchen. Nursey’s between classes, and it was closer to walk to the Haus than his dorm, and he knew Bitty would have something to snack on here; he couldn’t say the same for his dorm. He’s idly picking at a piece of pecan pie with a fork and scrolling through Twitter on his phone when Shitty walks in, sits down across from him at the table, and stares at him. Nursey tries, for a moment, to ignore it, before he gets nervous under his look and glances up. “Um?”

“How long have you been wearing a binder?” Shitty asks, without fanfare; he doesn’t fuck around the question like anyone else would. He gets right to the point, and Nursey can respect it, even if it sets off alarms in his head at first. Chill, Nursey; this was Shitty.

“Uh… four years,” Nursey answers.

Shitty hums, reaches over and steals a pecan off his plate. “So I’m assuming you know how to wear it,” he says, eyes challenging. 

Nursey doesn’t back down though. He shrugs, takes a bite of his pie and avoids his eyes again. “It’s like a tank top, so yeah, I guess.”

Normally, the silence would have been something that wouldn’t grind Nursey’s nerves, but the one that followers his admittance is. It makes his skin prick where he knows Shitty is watching him, so he glances up at him, and sees his face a mix of disbelief, concern and frustration. “Brah, it is not a fucking tank top!” Shitty all but yells at him, and then he’s off. Nursey learns there’s a proper way to wear it, a gauge on how tight or loose it should be, that you can’t wear it after a certain amount of time. He then gets a good earful about what to do before putting it on, during wearing it, and after taking it off, and the look in Shitty’s eyes when he tells Nursey to never wear it while he sleeps makes Nursey’s throat go dry, and he holds back the comment that he has already.

“And brah, don’t wear it during practices and games,” Shitty says, and Nursey’s so thrown off for a moment that Shitty steals his slice of pie and fork and starts eating, while Nursey sits and contemplates  _ why _ he wouldn’t be allowed to, and can only come up with the reasoning that it’ll make the guys uncomfortable, that it has. Shitty looks up at him, and must have seen the look on his face, before he’s speaking again. “It’s safer to do any exercise in sports bras instead of binders,” he tells Nursey, and he doesn’t sound aggressively caring like he did a moment ago, but there’s an edge to his voice; he’s serious about Nursey staying safe. He stands, dropping the dishes into the sink and walks past Nursey with a shoulder pat. “No one’s going to say shit, Nursey.”

He’s almost out of the kitchen before Nursey finds his voice again. “I knew you in Andover,” he tells him, quickly, turning in his chair to look at him. Shitty’s looking back at him, too, eyes scanning over his features and there’s a look of recognition on his face. “We played co-ed together. I-I wasn’t… out then.”

Shitty’s face softens, before he nods, smiling. “No problem, bro. Glad you’re comfortable now.”

He can’t find a lame excuse to give Bitty when he finds him slumped over the kitchen table, exhausted, but joy bursting in his chest.

 

* * *

It’s another few weeks before it’s brought up again. Nursey follows Shitty’s advice, starts doing breathing and stretches after he takes his binder off in the comfort of his dorm every night, and looks around for a sports bra that won’t make him feel too weird around the guys. He continues to not get a single comment in the locker room, where’s he taken to changing shirts in front of everyone now that he knows he won’t get shoved into a locker, and he feels like he has less to hide now; it feels almost liberating. Last time he put himself out in the open like this, he got it thrown back in his face, but no one on the team, coaches included, have said a thing to him. Shitty gets on his ass about the binder situation, though, and Nursey doesn’t ignore the way Bitty throws it those same disgusted looks he gets around store bought baked goods. He expects Bitty to corner him.

Bitty, instead, is sweet like honey and comes downstairs in the Haus while Nursey’s sitting in one of the armchairs with a notebook in his lap, writing down illegible ideas he’ll sort out later. “Nursey, hun, can I speak with you in my room about something?” he asks, smiling that way that Bitty smiles that makes Nursey feels so at home and at peace. He’s learnt Bitty can just about bribe himself into and out of any situation that he’s faced with a smile and a pie, but he’s not manipulative about it. He’s just cunning, Nursey decides. It’s kind of hard to say no to Bitty, too, when he smiles just right and his eyes look like a puppy’s, like he is now.

Nursey closes his notebook and stands, nodding. “Yeah, no problem, Bits,” he says, casually, and follows him up the stairs to his room. Bitty shuts the door behind them, then cheerily busies himself by climbing onto his bed and pulling out his laptop. Nursey feels pretty comfortable around Bitty; he was the only person who broke the tension in him that day in the locker room, and Nursey only pretended to not notice the way Bitty sometimes cast him long looks over breakfasts with a look in his eyes that wasn’t anything Nursey could place. Almost like recognition, somewhere between understanding and relief. Nursey doesn’t know what it’s about. “So, what’s up?”

“Well, I heard you and Shitty talking a few weeks back about how to wear your binder,” Bitty starts, gently, obviously ready to drop the subject if Nursey says the word. Nursey lets him talk with a small nod. “And well, I can’t help but notice that thing's fallin’ apart! How long have you had it?”

Nursey snorts a bit. “Since I was fourteen?”

“Goodness me. Nursey, we are buying you a new one!” Bitty says, in mock horror, and pats the red duvet next to him, and starts typing away on his laptop. “If you’re going to be wearing one, you might as wear one that doesn’t look like it’s about to rip at the seams!”

Nursey takes a seat next to Bitty, and moves his legs up to sit cross legged. He watches Bitty pull up a few sites, before he chimes in. “Uh, I don’t remember where I bought this one.”

“That’s alright,” Bitty tells him happily, smiling and turning his laptop a bit so he can see the screen better. “This site has the most reliable ones, but they can be a bit pricey. But I know a couple of other places that sell them a bit cheaper but might not be as reliable. You should be shooting for comfort, though, and I swear on my favorite pie crust recipe, these are comfortable.”

Nursey can’t help the little chuckle he lets out, taking the laptop from Bitty to look through the websites he has pulled up. “You really sound like you know what you’re talking about, Bitty.”

“Well, sweetheart, I do,” Bitty says with an air of finality, and it takes Nursey a few moments before he looks over at him, eyes questioning, and Bitty just smiles. “You’ve always got someone who understands what you’re going through, Derek.”

“Oh,” Nursey says quietly, then turns back to the laptop, rolling the words over in his head, before Bitty speaks again.

“What’s your size, by the way? Some of these don’t go up very high. It’s never been a problem for me, of course but-”

Nursey cuts him off with his signature Nursey Chill Shrug. “I eyeballed it when I was fourteen. I don’t know.”

There’s a heavy weight on his arm all the sudden, and Nursey recognizes it as a pillow that’s just been slammed into him. “Derek Malik Nurse!” Bitty yells, holding his pillow tightly and looking at him with a defensive, caring, aggressive anger and even though Bitty is half a foot shorter than him, he feels himself shrink away at how intimidating he is. “You didn’t measure yourself when you bought that! And you’ve been wearing it for four years! Do you know how bad that could be for you!” He throws the pillow at Nursey, hitting him square in the face, and feels his weight leave the bed next to him, then a rustling in the draws on the other side of the room. “I am appalled! I’m shocked! Do you know how bad that could have been for your ribs! No wonder Shitty is always on your case about this!” Nursey sits up and moves the pillow, and the laptop for good measure, before Bitty is shoving a soft tape measure in his hands and typing away on the keyboard again, before shoving that into his hands, too. “You are going to measure yourself properly before we buy you a new binder, young man!”

“Uh-” is all Nursey gets out before he’s pulled from Bitty’s bed and into his bathroom, the door shutting behind him.

“Let me know if you need any help!” Bitty says cheerily on the other side, every last drop of frustration gone from his voice. Nursey stands there for a moment, before carefully setting Bitty’s laptop down on the counter and looking at the screen; there’s three different videos on how to measure your chest for a binder open, and Nursey picks up on the trend immediately. He strips out of his shirt, and out of his binder that looks more and more frayed by the day, before picking up the tape measure and trying to mirror what they do in the video - wrapping it around their chests above a certain point - but there’s some kind of art to it that he’s not getting. It either slips down or it’s not straight, or he accidentally lets it go. He sighs, heavily, before opening the door just enough to peek his head out. Bitty is on his phone in bed, and looks up with a wide smile. “Did you get it, hun?” 

Nursey shakes his head, and Bitty immediately locks his phone and drops it, padding over to him. “I-I’m shirtless, though,” he says, quickly, and his smaller teammate’s face falls into something gentle.

“I don’t mind if you don’t,” he says softly with a smile. “It won’t bother me at all.”

Nursey hesitates. It’s just Bitty. Bitty knows what he is under is clothes is not who is. So Nursey nods, steps back from the door and lets Bitty into the bathroom, and doesn’t bother closing it behind them. He hands him the tape measure. “I couldn’t get it to stay it kept… Slipping or I’d let it go.”

“I know that feeling all too well,” Bitty chuckles, then steps up behind him, hands moving up, before stopping. “Do you-”

It takes him a moment to realize what he means. “Oh. Oh no, it’s chill,” he says, and Bitty wraps the tape measure around the front of his chest, before pulling it flush against his back without tightening. He then lets it go, and measures from one tip of his shoulder to the other, humming a Beyonce song under his breath.

“Alright,” he says happily, dropping it completely and starting to roll it back up, before patting Nursey’s shoulder. “Get dressed, hun, and we can consider your choices.” He gathers his laptop and leaves the bathroom as Nursey pulls on his binder and shirt, coming back out after him and sitting next to him again on his bed. “Luckily, it doesn’t seem like you’re some ridiculously large size, so we don’t have to worry about that,” Bitty says happily. 

“When did you know?” Nursey asks, suddenly, then backpedals when Bitty’s face falls. “I-I’m sorry, shit, I really don’t have a good filter. You don’t have to answer that-”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Bitty says, shaking his head and his smile is back. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t know until I was seventeen. I kind of knew when I was younger, though, I… I just didn’t know there was a name.” Nursey nods, because he doesn’t know what to say; he always felt kind of weird about not really knowing earlier, but it makes him feel at ease knowing Bitty was kind of the same way. He feels his hand on his shoulder, gently rubbing, and Bitty smiles at him. “If you ever need to talk about any of this, you can always come to me.”

Nursey smiles, blinking once to make his eyes stop stinging, before he nods. “Yeah. Thanks Bits.”

 

* * *

It’s a week later when his binder comes in. He’s almost to the halfway point of his first semester of Samwell, and to say he was feeling more relaxed and comfortable now than he had been his entire life would be a terrible, offensive understatement. Bitty proves to be a good confidant when it comes to his gender and all the things that he feels about them, and he can always count of Shitty to be back up for him whenever there’s a problem on the ice with him and some slur throwing jackass. The other’s have his back, he knows, but he’s grown close and attached to Shitty and Bitty.

He’s lounging on the Haus couch watching something on his phone when Jack walks in. At first, he doesn’t think anything of it; Jack lives here, his room is across the hall from Bitty’s, he has every right to come in without warning. It isn’t until Jack doesn’t really move from where he is that Nursey looks up and sees a package in his hands, and he doesn’t need to know whose name it is to know it’s his. And Jack looks  _ angry _ . He doesn’t know why, because as far as he can tell, he’s been perking up these past few weeks, has looked happier and happier. Jack’s stern, but he’s a good captain, a better captain than Tate had been that one year of Nursey’s life, and he never thought Jack had it out for him. But now he looks like he’s about to rip Nursey a new one, and all Nursey can think of that it’s the contents of that package that has him so angry. He’s got Shitty or Bitty’s names on the tips of his tongues, before Jack drops the package in his lap, making him jump. “After you get something to workout in, you’re running suicides for three weeks,” he says, voice flat. “Don’t put yourself in danger like that again, Derek.” Then he walks off, and Nursey sits, silent, confused, and pulls up a google search for compression bras.

He gets one a few days later, and it gets around to Jack whether he’s ready or not, and gets woken up at five AM on a Saturday morning. Nursey attempts to keep his complaining to a minimum as he stumbles around in his dorm to get dressed, before following Jack out to Faber with a cup of coffee in his hand and his hockey bag on his shoulder. “Why do you not look like you’re dead, dude,” Nursey mumbles, taking tentative sips of his coffee - it’s got just enough sugar and cream for his liking. He wonders if Jack asked Bitty how to make it for him. “I’m not usually up until seven…”

“I usually wake up earlier,” Jack says back. “I slept in an hour.”

“Not all of us are morning people.”

“Believe me, I can tell,” Jack chirps, and Nursey can’t help but smile.

Being on the ice wakes him up, with the cold in his face and the weight of his skates. He and Jack don’t bother with full gear, wearing hoodies and their sweats, and Nursey wonders if he really wanted to make him run drills. He lazily skate circles around the rink in silence, before Jack speaks up. “Shitty likes to say I have modes, like a robot, or something,” he says. “I guess when I told you we were going to be running suicides, I was in a mode. I kind of realize how it must have sounded for me to drop your binder in your lap and tell you we were going to be doing drills for it.”

“Oh, no, it’s chill,” Nursey says, shrugging. “I um, knew what you meant, so. No hard feelings.”

Jack hums, nodding and Nursey stuffs his hands into his hoodie’s front pocket, focusing on the way his feet glide across the ice in his skates, how balanced and natural it feels. He doesn’t know what to talk about with Jack, and Jack looks content to just skate in comfortable silence, so it’s what they do until the sun starts to peek up over the horizon and casts long shadows in the rink. They go back to the locker room and start changing to head back to the Haus, and Nursey stops to check his phone, cursing quietly at the time. Jack looks up where he’s got his hoodie half pulled off as Nursey digs through his bag, before pulling his little prescription bottle out and sighing. “Thank god…”

“Medication?” Jack asks, stuffing his things away in his bag. He sounds curious, but not offended. Given the track record with the team so far, Nursey decides Jack won’t have his head on a plate for this.

“Yeah. Uh. Antidepressants,” he says, trying to sound casual, but he sounds awkward. He grabs his water bottle and downs his pill with a gulp. “I’ve been on them since I was… shit, twelve?”

“Ah,” Jack says quietly, and it sounds like the conversation it dropped, before he speaks again. “I understand the feeling. I hope things are better for you.”

Nursey almost wants to press him on it, but Jack is a private person, and Nursey isn’t a piece of shit. He zips his bag and nods. “Yeah. Things are a lot better, thanks,” he says, smiling and Jack returns it. “Let’s head to the Haus. I bet Bitty is making waffles.”

“He does have that waffle iron he keeps talking about breaking in.”

 

* * *

Nursey curls up further into his bed, hands tight around his middle as he squeezes his eyes shut, trying to keep himself from grinding his teeth. It’s been a few months since his cramps have been this bad, and it’s the first time since he’s started at Samwell. He can already see a future where he’s too in pain and lethargic to make it to practice, and it’s annoying, really. It doesn’t help that there’s a steady hum of dysphoria under his skin, and as much as he wants to, he won’t put on his binder. He chokes back the tears forming in his eyes and grabs his phone off the pillow next to him, shooting a quick text.

**_Nursey_ ** _ : bits please help me im cramping so bad and i think im dying i need pamprin _

**_Bitty_ ** _ : Oh no, Nursey! :( I’m sorry I’m in class right now, I can’t bring you any for another hour. _

**_Bitty_ ** _ : Try Lardo? And put a heating pad on your stomach! _

Nursey groans, pressing his face into his pillow. Bitty is the only person he could even feel a shred of comfort around right now, but he couldn’t pull him out of class to come help him. He debates for a moment ig going to the Murder Stop and Shop to grab some himself would make him pass out, when his phone buzzes and he picks it up.

**_Lardo_ ** _ : Yo. Bitty said you need some help. What’s up. _

Goddammit Bitty. He sighs and clutches his phone, before typing back a reply. Screw his pride and comfort; he was enough pain to kill a full grown hockey player.

**_Nursey_ ** _ : im cramping so bad i think im going to die and im out of pamprin can you bring me some _

**_Lardo_ ** _ : Shit yeah I can. Need anything else? _

**_Nursey_ ** _ : pads with wings and as many twix as you can grab without it looking weird ill pay you back _

**_Lardo_ ** _ : Be over in 10. _

Nursey lets out a sigh of relief and lets his head fall back into his pillow as he pulls his blankets over himself. At least Lardo was chill about it, but then again, Lardo seemed to always be chill. She was manager for a reason, he guessed, because she tended to be pretty level headed and able to keep up with them all, including during parties. Nursey couldn’t really find a reason to complain, and if she delivered on pamprin, junk food and pads, he really wouldn’t.

There’s knock after ten minutes, right on time, and he managed to croak out that it’s fine, before Lardo walks in with a plastic bag in her free hand. “Yo Nurse,” she says casually, closing the door behind her and digging in the bag to throw him a bottle of pills. “I got you those, your pads, twenty packages of Twix, the double pack ones with four bars, and two bottles of soda. One Coke and one Dr. Pepper. Didn’t know your preference. I wasn’t going to assume Pepsi.”

That brings a laugh from him and he sits up, grabbing the water off his bedside table and taking a couple of Pamprin with a gulp, before taking the first Twix she handed him. “Thanks,” he said, opening it and taking one out, before offering one to her. “And thanks for bringing this over. I would have gone out and gotten it all myself, but…”

“Didn’t want to get halfway there and pass out from pain?” Lardo asks, sitting up on his bed near his feet and taking a bite of the candy.

“Ah, more like… Didn’t want to go out while I felt like… this,” he mumbles, and doesn’t know if Lardo will get the meaning.

He almost feels unsurprised when Lardo nods. “Ah, yeah, I get you. I feel like that sometimes.”

“Oh. Are you-”

“Nah,” Lardo shakes her head. “I’m somewhere on the nonbinary spectrum. Don’t care enough to figure out where. I’m comfortable where I am.”

Nursey nods; he gets it. “So do you mind the pronouns?”

Lardo hums. “I don’t. I don’t reject all the femininity and stuff. As Shits would say, there’s more to being nonbinary that presenting as masculine. Being on my period and shit only bothers me once a blue moon. I can’t imagine how you and Bitty do it all the time” she says.

He shrugs. “Determination.”

She finishes the twice, then slides off his bed and pats his arm. “You determined fuckers, then. I got an art class to get to, though. If you need anything else and don’t feel like going out, let me know.” He nods as she starts leaving.

“Thanks again, Lardo,” he says, smiling, sincerely. And she just winks back at him before she leaves.

 

* * *

Nursey tries to not make the self conscious glances he gives himself in the mirror a routine, but it sort of ends up like that. He’s just having an off week, he knows that, because last week he was  _ fine _ . But this week he feels wrong. His waist feels too small, his hips feel too big, his chest (which, honestly, has never been well endowed) feels too  _ obvious _ , even with his binder. His voice feels too high in his throat, his hair, which he just had cut, feels too long. Nothing about his body feels right and he doesn’t mean to take it onto the ice, but he does. Coach Murray sets up a scrimmage for practice, Dex and Nursey verses Holster and Ransom, which normally would have been fine; despite all his differences with Dex, they played on the ice fine. But everything goes wrong, and him and Dex end up getting their asses kicked. It doesn’t surprise him when Dex rips his helmet off after Coach Hall calls it quits and skates up to him with a flushed face and eyebrows low, anger in his eyes. “What the fuck, Nursey?” he snaps. “Want to try to play hockey a bit better there?”

If Nursey felt better than he did, it’d be the usual; a snarky, sarcastic bite back that would have Dex snapping back, and they’d go from there. But nothing felt right, which included this back and forth bullshit with Dex, so he doesn’t grace him with a real comeback. “Sorry,” is all he can manage to say before he skates off the ice, ignoring Dex’s yelling. He barely manages to pull his skates off before he’s heading to the locker room, all but throwing his stuff in the general direction of his stall and pressing the palms of his hands so hard into his eyes he sees white sunbursts behind his lids, trying to ignore the way he  _ wants _ to cry, and instead focuses on pulling off his jersey and tossing it on top of his things, before he heads to the mirrors in the showers. 

He doesn’t know how long he stands there, staring at himself uncomfortably in the mirror at his waist and hips and chest and bra and shoulders, arms around his middle and holding, like he was trying to press into a small space and disappear, before he hears Ransom and Holster’s voices. “Nurse?” they call out, voices echoing in the quiet locker room, before he hears the chatter of the rest of the team. He hopes Dex doesn’t come and find him. He holds his sides closer as Ransom and Holster round the corner and spot him, giving them a side glance that should say enough; he doesn’t want to talk about it. He’d talk to Bitty or Lardo lately, probably. They don’t leave him, though. Ransom steps in first, throwing an arm around his shoulders and pulling him close. “Bro, Nursey, you gotta find your chill,” is what he says, lightly chirping. He turns him away from the mirror, though, and Nursey gives his reflection one last glance before he loses eye contact with it. “If you start storming off the ice when you lose at scrimmages, you’re going to put Dex out of business.”

“Ransom is right,” Holster says, throwing his arm on top of Ransom’s. They’re heading back out to the rest of the team now. Nursey is too busy listening to them bicker about his on dramatic on ice storm off to listen to the way his brain panics. “There’s only room for one ill tempered frog on the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team, and I think Poindexter has that covered.”

“Hey!” is what Dex shouts over the noise and the music, and Nursey laughs for what feels like the first time in days. It’s not a big laugh, but it’s enough that it has Holster and Ransom tossing glances across him.

They lead him to his stall and pat his back in sync. “Get dressed, Derek! We’re taking you to that real great burger place nearby,” Holster tells him, before ruffling his hair. “Our treat.”

Nursey stands there as they walk off together, smiling, before he reaches down and grabs his shirt. His off week ends the next morning.

 

* * *

Nursey was chill. He was so chill; it was part of who he was. Derek Malik “Chill Nursey” Nurse. It was something he had been since Tate, since his team, since everything. The hockey team was breaking him out of his shell little by little, between Shitty’s acceptance of him, Bitty and Lardo’s understanding and support, Ransom and Holster’s refusal to let him sulk off and self deprecate, Jack’s firm, but gentle, leadership. He was not the same Nursey he was at sixteen, thank God, but he was still chill.

He was absolutely not chill right now.

He had started a laundry late at night after getting back from a game at Faber late with Chowder and Dex. Dex had wandered off, dead on his feet and still nursing his aching side, but Chowder kept him company as they both loaded dirty clothes into washers in the dorm laundry room. The coffee he had picked up at Annie’s is wearing off by the time he loads everything into the dryer, though, and he forgets one important thing that he doesn’t find out about until morning when him and Chowder, cheerily, go to grab their shit before class.

Nursey pulls out his shrunk binder from the dryer and it takes one, two, beats of silence before he drops it and runs his hands over his face. “Fuck-” he curses, then sighs heavily, trying to keep his composure.

“Oh no, Nursey, is that you’re binder?” Chowder asks from next to him, worry in his over enthusiastic voice. He’s pulling a sharks hoodie from the dryer, one that looks too big for even Nursey. “I thought Bitty said you can’t dry those.”

“You can’t, I just-” he can hear the wobble in his voice and he stops himself before he can properly break down. He needed to breathe. He can wear his bra today, it’s fine. No one’s going to notice, really. But his head isn’t on straight; he’s still running through that bad check Dex took the night before during the game, still thinking about that poetry contest he still needs to work on something for, how mid terms are so close and how he’s not-

“Nursey?” Chowders asks, quietly, and Nursey blinks and he’s out of his head, in the dorm laundry room, and he’s got his arms around himself, digging nails into his skin, and- oh. He uncurls himself, takes a steadying breath, but it doesn’t pass by Chowder. “Are you okay?”

“Y-Yeah,” he says, wishes his voice didn’t shake. “I’m fine, C.”

“You’re bleeding.”

Nursey looks down at his arms, sees pinpoints of blood on his skin where his nails had been, and swallows down the “chill” on his tongue. “Oh-”

Before he can do anything, Chowder has a dark hand towel out of his own basket and he’s cleaning the blood off Nursey’s skin without a word. Nursey watches him, then feels a knot in his throat when Chowder freezes over the scars still littering his left arm. Normally, no one’s close enough to notice them, and you don’t if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Nursey wears a watch to hide the worst one that is right over the vein on his left wrist, and the rest are barely noticeable if he wears short sleeves and hidden if he wears long sleeves. He hasn’t had anyone this close to them before. But Chowder is okay. Chowder is one of his best friends now, who loves everything and everyone no matter what. “Did… Did something happen?” he asked, before pulling back when he had gotten all the blood off, tossing it back into his basket. He won’t meet his eyes, though. Nursey doesn’t think Chowder’s used to having conversations like this.

“Yeah,” Nursey says softly. The rumble of a dryer a few feet away breaks the silence, at least. “I… I made some mistakes when I was fifteen. I got really drunk one night with some guy I thought I loved. He turned out to be an asshole, but… It was bad. I was in a bad spot after he left, and I-” He stops. He doesn’t know how to say it; he’s never said it out loud to anyone but his therapist, and even then he danced around it before she finally got it out of him. Chowder is his best friend. He can tell him. He  _ has _ to tell him. He can’t keep running from this shadow Tate’s left on his life. “I tried to kill myself.”

Chowder’s arms are around him immediately, face pressed into his shoulder and hands clutching at the back of the old sleep shirt Nursey had found tucked in the back of his closet last night. Nursey doesn’t move, for a moment, head spinning a bit because he never saw Chowder move, before Chowder speaks. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says, against his shoulder, chest vibrating with his words. Nursey feels his eyes burn. “I’m glad you’re here, Nursey.”

Nursey wraps his arms around Chowder in return, holding him tight against him, letting out a watery chuckle. “I am, too, C.”

It’s only a few moments later that they pull back, and Chowder immediately grabs his Sharks hoodie from his basket, offering it to him. “Here. You can borrow it until you can replace your binder. It’s big! So no one should notice.”

He takes it, even though teal isn’t his color and slips it on with a smile. “Thanks.”

“And you’re… You’re okay, right?” Chowder asks, grabbing his things from the floor. Nursey mirrors him and they start walking back to their dorm together. His voice is low, but gentle. This is what a best friend should be, Current Nursey would tell Past Nursey. This is how a best friend should act. “I mean… More than you were?”

Nursey doesn’t hesitate with his answer. “I’m the best I’ve been my entire life here, C.” And he means it.

 

* * *

 

William J Poindexter is an enigma. Nursey doesn’t understand him, and he’s been trying since school officially started, but he still doesn’t have an answer. He’s always uptight, always tense and stressed, and he yells when Nursey chirps him, like it’s some kind of crime. Their friendship starts less as a friendship but a mutual understanding that off the ice, their screaming matches are allowed to go as long as they want, but not a bit of it ends up in the rink. They play as well together as Holster and Ransom do, so no one really complains, but for a while, he knows Chowder was giving them sad glances between their daily arguments, and even Bitty had come to talk to him about it once. It’s just how they are, though. Nursey accepts it, even if he doesn’t get Dex, and considers it a better situation than he had ever been in with Tate; at least he knows Dex won’t try to pull the rug out from under him.

He wants to believe Dex’s apparent hatred of him is all superficial; his money, his family, the school he went to, how he approaches everything in such a relaxed way. It’s what Dex tells him, at least. But there’s a nagging his brain, at the back, that remembers Tate, remembers the Andover co-ed hockey team, that tells him that’s not what it is, but he tries so hard to ignore it. He stops being able to ignore it when he catches Dex’s jaw clench at the sight of his binder as he’s buttoning up his plaid before leaving for class, and it makes a sick feeling settle into his stomach. He thinks it's subconscious, has to pretend it is, because he’s never seen him give that look to Bitty before. Nursey still starts sticking a little closer to Shitty because of it, though, knowing if Dex dared to say a thing that Shitty’s rant would be full of vitriol and it would make him back down. If Shitty notices this, he doesn’t say a word.

It makes him feel a sick wave of nostalgia, though, because Dex isn’t terrible looking; he’s got red hair and amber eyes that make Nursey think of the fall, and freckles that look like a starry night sky without all the noise pollution. He looks cute when he laughs, and in those moments when they aren’t yelling at each other, he’s funny and just as sarcastic as Nursey is. He’s intelligent, and he’s capable, and he’s not scared to call people out. And Nursey, Nursey doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s got a tug in his heart toward him, one that feels so similar to when he was fifteen, but so different. He watches him on the ice the same way he watched Tate, and feels like he could wax poetic about the way Dex jumps the wall to get on the rink, how he turns and skates backwards because he’s a show off, how his mouth turns into that shit eating grin when he hits someone’s nerve. But he pushes it back, pushes it down, because he won’t make the same mistakes twice. He  _ can’t _ make the same mistakes twice.

The Haus is throwing a party for no real reason than other because they can, and Nursey can’t not show up, so he does. He keeps his drinking light, remembering how alcohol and his medication react to each other, and not wanting to get too crazy because he’s sure he saw a couple of undercover Lax Bros wandering around, and he doesn’t want to drunkenly out himself to a Lax Bro. He refuses to take Shitty’s tub juice, and settles on the couch where Chowder soon joins him, with his legs half in his lap and Caitlin Farmer from the volleyball team on his hip, and it makes him feel sick when Dex plops down next to him. Dex is clearly more drunk than him, holding a red solo cup of unknown alcoholic beverage in one hand, the other pointing directly at Nursey himself. “I don’t understand you,” he slurs, and Nursey just blinks, and takes a careful sip of the hard lemonade Bitty had stashed in the back of the basement fridge. He’ll let Dex ramble, he guesses. It’ll be entertaining, if nothing else. He expects the usual, about his “chill”, about his poetry, about his interest in history that makes Jack’s eyes light up, but what comes out of Dex’s makes his chest feel tight. “Why do you fucking wear that binder thing?”

From next to them, Chowder and Farmer laugh together, but they’re in their own conversation over the music. Nursey sees Bitty and Jack trade smiles across the living room, watches Shitty and Lardo demolish Ransom and Holster in beer pong, and wonders why he’s stuck in this conversation. “I like my chest flat,” he says, taking another careful sip of his drink and pointedly avoiding Dex’s eyes. He could leave, but Chowder’s legs are still over his. Dammit, C. “Why is that an issue?”

“It’s not, and I fucking get that,” Dex says, and Nursey’s eyebrows fall, so he looks over at him. Dex looks intense, looks focused, but also looks kind of frustrated, like Nursey isn’t understanding him. He wants to chirp him about the fact he’s drunk, and realizes that Dex wouldn’t understand what he was talking about. “But you’re… You’re like. You have money, right? You’re loaded, or whatever, you went to that fucking prep school in Andover. Why do you wear that when you could just get top surgery?”

Nursey’s face fades into a deer in the headlights look and everything clicks in his head that he’s sure it made an audible sound. Surgery? He didn’t know that was a thing; his research had gotten even lazier since he started school, and really, he wasn’t totally miserable the way he was now. It never crossed his mind. Dex doesn’t look impressed, still looking vaguely pissed off and Nursey swallows a lump in his throat, before he speaks. “That’s… That’s a thing?”

“Is it a thing,” Dex mocks him, scoffing and rolling his eyes. “Of course it’s a fucking thing. My brother got it done a few years back, so why don’t you? You could easily afford it. And then Shitty would stop yelling at you about being safe or, whatever.”

The revelation Nursey has at that moment feels like a life altering one; Dex wasn’t trying to be a dick. He was actually, in a weird, backhanded, “ _ I almost sounded like a transphobic asshole before I got my drunken mouth to work with me”, _ William J Poindexter way., trying to tell Nursey that he cared about him In a very Dex way, Nursey decides. A very, very Dex way. “I honestly didn’t know it was a thing,” he admits. This time he takes a long drink from his cup.

“Sounds like the team knew more trans stuff than you did, at this rate,” he chirps, lightly. There’s no malice in it. Nursey feels his chest flutter.

“Yeah, that’s sort of what happens when you find out at fourteen and have to spend four years in the closet.”

“Hmm,” Dex hums in return, and takes a drink from his cup.

They spend some time in silence, listening to Chowder and Farmer laugh, the way Shitty bellows across the house about alcohol, how Bitty is chirping Jack nonstop. They listen to the music, some Beyonce mix no doubt Bitty put on, and Nursey feels the way his chest flutters, warmly, before he bumps his shoulder against Dex’s. “Um, thanks,” he tells him, just loud enough that he can hear, but just quiet enough so no one else can.

Dex bumps his shoulder in return, and Nursey pretends to not notice the way his ears are red at the tips. “Yeah, you’re welcome,” he says, and his tone is gentle.

 

* * *

 

The team raises the money for his surgery, even though they all know he can pay for it himself, and when there’s a lull in what he needs to do, he goes and gets it done, and feels like he’s finally taking that last huge hurdle in his life, in accepting himself, and it feels good. Feels so fucking good.

When he wakes up in his hospital room, for an entirely different reason than when he was fifteen, but still as sore and achy, he looks to the little nightstand next to his bed and sees a “Congrats!” card with Dex’s blocky writing on the inside and a single flower next to it.

And Nursey. He smiles.

Maybe the Samwell Men’s Hockey Team was pretty damn alright after all.

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ i dont know why its so long yall i projected and here we are.
> 
> a big fucking shout out to the check please hell discord chat i made which includes lucy, kat, tyler, shade, gav, hedwig, kc, erin, arryn, cass, aidan, mixx and jordy because they've been listening to me scream about this headcanon ive had for nursey for an entire week before i finally got my ass around to writing it. yall are the best. please dont kill me.
> 
> [[follow me on twitter!](http://twitter.com/milessqueak/)]


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